


sawdust

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Supernatural Elements, UnDeadwood Mini-series (Critical Role)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-18 04:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 10,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21505351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: Scraps and drabbles for UnDeadwood, featuring a lot of AUs
Comments: 37
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly snippets and prompts from the Undeadwood discord

(“genie au”)

He finds it in an abandoned mining town, half buried under shattered furniture in the most intact shack he could find as shelter for the night.

Clayton doesn’t know what it is at first, just some weird looking metal mesh tube before he recognizes it as a davy lamp. Makes sense, he thinks absently, scouring his pack for a match, he was pretty sure this place did duty as a coal mine. He isn’t about to turn down some extra light, he wanted to double check his map before morning, one of the paths he taken up had twisted oddly. 

(Clayton very pointedly isn’t thinking about how god damned quiet it is here, even the shrill scream of crickets are far away-the only other living thing nearby is his horse)

He’s already set up a little fire in the mostly intact fireplace, bedroll rolled out on the clearest bit of floor he could make. The davy lamp still has some oil in it, luckily, and he settles down with it as the evening light slowly shrinks back through the windows.

Clayton lights the lamp as the sun finally fades and his eyes are straining to read by the light of the campfire.

There’s a small click and the wick flares wildly, eating past the mesh bright and _blue _-__

__Fuck_ _

__Clayton flings himself backwards as the lamp explodes-but it’s strangely silent, and heat doesn’t wash over him. He lowers his arms, half raised in desperate defense, blinking spots out of his eyes._ _

__There’s a man standing over the davy lamp, swathed in black fabric with a gleam of white at his throat-_ _

__“Good evening.”_ _

__\------_ _

__(“clayton is ticklish”)_ _“What on earth was that noise??”_ _

__Clayton glared from where he’d all but levitated sideways away from Mason, who’s hand was still reaching out. He’d just meant to adjust Clayton’s shirt from where it was riding up from his holsters and his fingers had brushed skin and Clayton had made a noise like a tea kettle._ _

__A very angry tea kettle, now glaring at him from under his hat._ _

__“Clayton,” Arabella began, a huge grin breaking across her face, “Are you ticklish?”_ _

__A beat of dead silence that had Aly and Miriam glancing back at them._ _

__“No.” Clayton said. He was leaning away from Arabella now, tilting back toward Mason._ _

__Arabella’s grin got wider. Her gaze flickered from Mason’s face to his still raised hands, now back in range. He obliged._ _

__Yup, tea kettle._ _

__\-----_ _

__(Blessed!Clayton)_ _Clayton prays the same way you cuss out intimate objects, you dont expect it to do fuck all but its human habit to talk._ _

__" _Help him _you thrice cursed piece of-" Clayton snarls, blood seeping between his fingers as Mason chokes out a laugh, "That's quite the prayer, Mister Sharpe"___ _

____Clayton does not believe in much of anything, that assigns too much potential good will to the vagaries of the universe. He has something like faith though, grown sideways like a craggy tree on a mountainside, about the concept of pure stubborn telling death to fuck off. Sometimes that's enough._ _ _ _

____(beneath his hands flash begins to knit closed)_ _ _ _

____\------_ _ _ _

____(“A tentacle monster appears from the abyss and steals you away before my eyes”)_ _There are things that live in the sky out West. Remnants of when the oceans flooded the world, still drifting on phantasmic waves. You don’t see ‘em much, just the occasional massive shadow lit by the lighting in storm clouds. They lived between Here and Not Here, and weren’t usually much of a bother to folk._ _ _ _

____Usually._ _ _ _

____(angels, some folk called them, beings that hurt the eye to look upon. sometimes, if you prayed right, they’d take you away)_ _ _ _

____The lot of them are all clustered together, back to back to back like that’s gonna help anything, guns raised in ludicrous defense, as coils with the weight of locomotives encircle their group._ _ _ _

____(he can’t see any sign of the cultish folks Al had sent them out for anymore, hasn’t since the coils had descended)_ _ _ _

____Then the Reverend had stepped forward, a strange expression of recognition flitting across his face at the sight of dark not-quite-feathers and the oddly careful way their little group had been avoided so far._ _ _ _

____Clayton watches at the Reverend reaches _up _, face relaxing into a fond smile, at yet more descend.___ _ _ _

______“ _Matthew! _” Arabella barks, sheet white and gun raised-slowly turning toward the Reverend.___ _ _ _ _ _

________(the things in the sky take people, sometimes, some amplified version of the urge to touch the gleaming scales of a rattler. they are never seen again)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________He turns back to them, that same soft crooked smile and easy shoulders._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“They’re friendly,” he says, and Clayton feels ice in his gut. He sees Arabella’s expression go tight-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Turns out the coils move damn fast._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(they wake up just outside of Deadwood, rain soaking into their clothes. The Reverend is already awake. His shadow is long in the dark)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________\------_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(“Sickfic”)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Arabella squinted dubiously at Matthew from her nest of blankets, expression only intensifying when she saw the bowl of stew he was carrying._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Clayton, leaned back in the room’s only chair with his (bare, given Arabella’s vehement protests about shoes on in her room) feet plopped on the foot of her bed, gave Matthew an equally dubious expression. They were dead ringers for each other sometimes, and he prayed that neither of them ever mastered the power of Miriam’s “bless your heart” expression._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“I can cook, you know,” he said and promptly received simultaneous “ehn” noises that set Arabella to coughing. He sighed and beat Clayton to reaching her, gently pulling her up to better lean on her pillows. He absently re-soaked the cloth and replaced it as well, brushing the back of his hand over her forehead. She wasn’t running much of a fever, thank God, but he always worried._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“You’re not half bad at this,” Clayton murmured at his shoulder._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Three younger siblings, I’d have to be at this point,” Matthew replied and froze utterly at Arabella’s suddenly alert eyes and the feel of Clayton’s stare at the back of his neck._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Ah-um, enjoy the stew,” Matthew said and beat a hasty retreat._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________\---------_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(“ghost hunter clayton, ghost mason”)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The church was beautiful._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Clayton had decided to stay behind for just a few minutes after everyone else had packed up the equipment, although Bella had shoved a recorder in his hand with some rather intense threats to use it because if he managed to talk to something the one time the cameras were off-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________As the resident skeptic, he'd scoffed, but as a sane and reasonable person with a desire to remain un-maimed, he'd acquiesced._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(as the resident skeptic he'd kept his mouth shut at how familiar this church felt, down to the century old burn marks on well repaired walls)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The church was just pretty in the dark, peaceful and quiet and the full moon bleed light across the pews. It had been a very long few months and Clayton would grab any calm where he could._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________He could hear the occasional pop of wooden beams as the old church settled, strangely muted. Folding his legs criss cross on the pew he leaned against the smooth back, letting his head tilt forward and eyes shut. The nearly inaudible hum of the recorder whirred next to his hand._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________"What on earth are you doing here this late, Clayton?"_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The recorder nearly went flying as Clayton flailed into standing, a bare few feet from the figure standing in the aisle._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________It looked like a priest, almost, mostly shadow but a stripe of white near where the neck should be-where the neck was, the figure was becoming more distinct by the second._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Clayton stared at the gut wrenchingly familiar face of a man he'd never seen before in his life. The taste of copper flooded his mouth and a name slipped out._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________"Matthew?"_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________\---------_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(“groundhog day”)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Matthew stops praying at some point and it takes a while for the other to notice (for Them to notice, not the odd pale shadows he meets before the familiarity bleeds back into their eyes)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Matthew stops praying because the words start to feel like (snake skinned) ash in his mouth, feels like the prayers bounce off the ceiling of whatever it is that traps them, words caught in a snare._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Arabella notices first, her shade notices the way he half mouths his speech at the Beginning, how he watches her spells and aches and how he asks more and more of the Dealer (restart restart with a new hand new soul he’s not so sure he has one now)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Rare, a preacher who doesn’t preach” her shade says (she apologizes later, eyes dark and soft)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The others will eye him warily, his false smile is more strained now, something (“-feral as the things he creates-”) sharp sliding around the edges._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________It hurts until their sharp edges come back too._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(he has faith in a God still, just maybe not the same one)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________\--------_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(“Unicorn Clayton and Warlock Mason”)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“That’s your patron?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Yep,” Matthew replied, unphased by the breath stirring his hair._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Arabella stared back, wide-eyed. There was a massive, pitch black horse with winter pale eyes standing over Matthew. Matthew's head barely came to its shoulder. A great, spiraling horn jutted from its brow. Most of it was streaked with red._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Matthew smiled, sharp as the horn behind him, and suddenly everything about this unassuming priest made sense._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“His name is Clayton.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________\-----_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(“siren AU”)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Folks tend to associate Sirens with the ocean, with dockside cities or those great big lakes up north. Maybe a river, Clayton’s heard that parts of the Mississippi get downright massive. Point was, people don’t think to find Sirens out in the Dakota territory, workin as a hired gun._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________People hired him cause he kept his goddamn mouth shut, thought he was just the quiet type, and honestly Clayton was. He’d never been inclined to chattering, and that was good._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________(he was raised to be careful with his weapons, guns and voice)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________He’d kept his head down and his mouth shut, till Deadwood._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________-  
If Al sends them after some random fucking bandits with no information one more time-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Matthew yanks on the restraints again, feels the rope creak. Arabella and Clayton are just as trussed up nearby, and Matthew’s a bit surprised the ass with the stupid hat hasn’t caught fire from the force of Arabella’s glare. If Miriam wasn’t stuck ill at the Bella Union and Aly outta town the man would be dead by glare already._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________They’d been caught by surprise, the number of assholes in this here camp being wildly inaccurate according to Al’s information. Matthew catches Clayton’s eye, hoping the man would have some idea of what to do, seeing as Arabella was preoccupied cussing out the fella in front of her and every bit of his ancestry’s dubious relations with various barnyard animals._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Clayton looks back, and there’s a strange look of near resignation on his face. He tilts his head toward where Matthew’s working on the rope, and mouths “wait”._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Matthew pauses, confused, and then Clayton’s twisting himself to sit near upright and says in a voice like bells and velvet-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Leave.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The bandits turn and go, leaving horses and equipment and everything. Matthew watches them go, utterly baffled until he hears a thump and wriggles around to see Arabella trying to stand, eyes glazed and expression lax._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“What the-”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________A thin, discordant note like a poorly made whistle cuts through his exclamation. Matthew jerks to look at Clayton, who looks as shocked as he’s ever seen him._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“You weren’t-”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“What the fuck” barks Arabella, back to being spitting mad._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Clayton takes a deep breath, still staring at Matthew._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Y’ ever heard of sirens?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________\-------------------------------_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________ _ _ _ _ _ _

________-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	2. enough electricity for a heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt" "frankenstein au", minor clayton/matthew

\----

One scar two scar three scar four-

(childhood cadence, thumb catching along stitches and raised skin)

The Reverend is covered in scars. Few are visible above clothing (the scar on his cheek is from something else). 

(the men at fort collins were curious, they’d heard about the men at gettysburg, and some bright brass pin decided-)

He’s all himself, thanks (he thinks). He hadn’t been missing any bits (executed as a deserter, hanging didn’t work, getting shot through the heart did, as he gasped in the dirt) when they woke him back up.

(electricity was everyone’s new plaything)

One scar:

A set of punctures at the base of his skull, now hidden by his hairline. 

(years later arabella sees them by chance of a head tilt, and can guess what they’re from)

Two scar:

A line through a gunshot wound. They had to stitch his still heart up.

(years later miriam sees it, bandaging a new wound)

Three scar:

More punctures along his spine. 

(years later clayton touches them, scars pale with age as he runs his fingertips up matthew’s spine, he follows with his lips)

There is an attack in the night, soldiers returning, bleeding, dying. Something breaks the cell door.

He runs.

Four:

(he kills a man on the way out, gets a sliced open face in return)

It’s the first thing anyone sees.

\-----------


	3. ghost lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt "swamp thing", immediately derailed into wil o wisps

\-----------------

There are no swamps in the Dakota Territory. Everyone knows that.

(some folk from down south could’ve told ‘em about some of the critters that live in swamps though)

When the man who wasn’t yet Reverend Matthew Mason ran he ran north. Mountains sank into sprawling hills and a great arching sky, all empty. 

It’s strange, the kind of tricks your eyes can play on you in that kind of pitch black empty. Stars seems to dance out of the sky onto the plains, low and close enough that if you just-

When the man who wasn’t yet Reverend Matthew Mason ran he ran scared of the bloody death behind him. His world was hoofbeats and the ground below him, and he did not notice the beckoning lights far from the road. 

He runs, and the lights begin to drift closer. 

When he finally sees one it is a mere dozen feet from the road, blue and nearly human shaped. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, half delirious with terror and exhaustion. A ghost is so much more benign than what he’s left behind. “I don’t think I can help you. I’m sorry.”

He repeats and repeats his apologies, half speaking to the beckoning ghost, half to the men he’s left behind. 

The light keeps pace. 

The dawn light begins to wash the plains in pale pinks and golds, and the lights vanish, one by one.

Dirt rises in puffs below his slowly plodding horse’s hooves, as the man who is not yet Reverend Matthew Mason leans against its neck. His horse slows to a stop, and he looks down.

There’s a man standing by his horse, in the dawn light.

His eyes are blue, and he raises a hand.

Matthew reaches out.

\-----------


	4. little black cat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from the prompt "I found this cute cat on the sidewalk but turns out it isn't a cat", and then cat sìth and the bit of lore that says they steal souls happened so

\---

There’s a cat living under the porch. Matthew honestly wouldn’t think much of it, cats are common enough around Deadwood, plenty of rats and the like to feed more than a few scrawny strays.

Except.

It’s a bold little thing, dark fur and bright blue eyes perching on the back of pews, watching him strip boards from walls. Swearengen’s money was nice enough, but the oil made Matthew nervous (in more than one way), so most of the gold went to supplies instead of hire.

He startles the first few times he turns to grab something and finds a cat staring back, but he gets used to it eventually. Starts talking to it, in the manner of someone not accustomed to having a listening set of ears around. Offhand asides and spoken thought directed to a breathing shape, mostly. 

The cat stays far away, at first. He’s not sure why it wandered its early inside the church, until he realizes that where it likes to perch is below a hole in the roof, liming its fur in a soft gold halo. It starts to inch closer, day by day, finding new patches of sun from the burnt roof. Matthew eventually lures it close enough to sniff his fingers through liberal application of jerky. 

The cat never makes any noise, but when it grows confident enough to coil about his shins as he tries to carry planks he can feel it purring. 

It starts following him away from the church, the rare times he leaves it, nowadays. Even follows him right into the Gem once, darting between tables and boots to leap up onto his shoulder. Miriam laughs, startled, and says he has a matching shadow.

The little black cat has a patch of white fur on its chest, he’d never noticed before now.

Several nights later he goes to sleep with the cat purring on his chest. He dreams.

He is standing on a plain, grass rustling against his waist, night sky endless overhead. He can hear the distant rumble of thunder. It feels safe, calm.

(there’s something behind him)

The Dealer is there, mouthpiece for the thing behind it. It is angry and. Cheated.

“You _stole_ it,” the great thing hisses. Matthew blinks, confused. 

“Stole what?” he says, or tires to. His voice is swallowed by the rustling grass and distant thunder, or never leaves his throat at all.

“No _right_ ,” the great things says. 

It is not speaking to him.

The moon is bright and blue behind him. 

(there’s something-)

 _Too slow_ , the shape behind him says to the other.

There is a claw hooked in his ribs.

The thunder is getting louder and it’s one long continuous rumble and the claw pulls. 

Matthew wakes up. The black cat with a white spot is still purring on his chest. Its eyes are bright and blue.

\---

(a while after a certain six days, Aloysius Fogg also wakes up, slow and easy and rested like he hasn't been since-Aloysius Fogg wakes up, slow and easy with a cat on his chest, kneading firmly with sharp needle claws but purring fit to wake the dead. It's a friendly little thing he occasionally feeds fish and jerky, and he doesn't think too hard about how it shows up with miles and miles between where he last saw it. It's a friendly little thing, and he's never slept better)

\-----------------------


	5. victory and skins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a couple of drabbles

_VICTORY_

How terrible, people say, to lose a sister and a husband in the same year.

Yes, Arabella says, gathering condolences like badges of victory, It is, isn't it. 

-

(the first thing she does after is cry, relief dripping down her face to join the corpse on the floor. there are no tear catchers here)

-

"-dearly missed," the Reverend says, and Arabella catches the way his eyes flicker to meet hers and knows his gentle smile is an expression of the wild grin she cannot let show on her own face.

"Yes," she replies, leaning into Miriam's hold, "dearly."

-

There are rumors of course, how couldn't there be. A man dies alone in his locked house with no sign of a struggle from two gunshot wounds to the chest, his wife in town well away from the scene.

There are no guns in the house.

(seances are all the rage these days, and clayton has had entirely too much fun walking through walls)

\-------

_SKINS_

Amos spends some time as a rattler, a tangle of scales on warm rock and a way to scream go away.

Michael spends some time as a hawk, sharp eyed with the sun warm on his wings.

Reed spends some time as a bear, sleeping and safe and left alone. 

Elijah spends some time as an adder, a tangle of scales under cool roots and no warning before a bite.

James spends some time as a dog, doe eyed and soft, hands on him gentle like they never were otherwise.

Linwood spends some time as a sparrow, bright and fast and darting, so common as to be invisible. 

Clayton bleeds out on the street, and thinks ruefully that a bird would’ve been harder to hit than a man.

(Matthew leaves the corpse for only a moment, and comes back to a young crow, shivering on an empty table)

\------


	6. relics

-

Clayton Sharpe picks up the rosary off a road out of Rapid City. He finds it half buried in dirt near where he makes camp for the evening in a stand of pine trees. 

It’s nothing fancy, when he sees it. Looks like tin and wood, with a crucifix that’s startlingly weighty when he picks it up out of the dead grass. The thing looks like it had been well cared for once, dirt brushing away with a few careful swipes of his thumb. The beads gleam dark, well polished and stained wood tiny dark stars between metal links. The crucifix itself appears to be steel, fairly well made, Clayton muses, watching the metal catch the weak early fall sun. 

It’s a pretty little thing, shame someone lost it. 

He tucks it away in his jacket absently, already standing to find some wood for a fire. 

(if the sun was brighter maybe he’d seen the strange stains in the wood, in the dirt)

-

Someone is _fucking watching him_ but there’s no one on the goddamn road and he ain’t seen anyone in the woods and didn’t hear anything when the sensation of eyes got to be too much and he spooked like the startled bird he pretends he ain’t and sent his horse thundering down the road for a bit. 

He finally fucking gives up after a full two days of this shit, resigning himself to the fact that the-eyes, presence, whatever, don’t seem interested in causing him harm. That’s rarity enough in this life that he decides to let it be. 

Of course about an hour in to contemplating this new lot in life is when a low man’s voice says next to his ear-

“Don’t I know you?”

Clayton Sharpe is a professional gun for hire and he does not fall off his horse nor does he shriek. He does yank out a pistol fast enough to nearly drop it and nearly twist right out of his saddle to face-

An empty road.

“What in the hell?” Clayton breathes. He’d felt someone behind him, heat and weight and familiar enough that he’d not registered how wrong it was until the nothing had spoken.

“Oh, it’s you,” says the nothing and he’s never heard that voice before but he _knows it._ The voice is still coming from the nothing he’s staring at and his horse is shifting nervously beneath him and then dark eyes in an achingly unfamiliar face is staring back at him, smiling.

“Hello, Clayton.”

Clayton blinks and lowers his gun. The rosary in his pocket is heavy, and smells faintly of copper.

“Hi Matthew.”

\-------------------


	7. chains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> might turn this into something longer at some point

-

Amos could see people’s chains, growin’ up. They was in-tan-gi-ble things, were a person’s loves, greeds, hopes, loyalties, ambitions. They wasn’t always good things, but not always bad either. Could be both, sometimes. Could be to another person, could loop back in on itself cause it was attached to a thing in a person’s head, like an idea.

His ma could see ‘em too, was why he knew what they were. 

(there was a thin, delicate chain of gold trailing from her ring finger to his da’s. It never faded, or got dark like the bruises did, and that’s how he knew the chains lied sometimes, cause people make ‘em and people lie)

He could see his own. 

Most snapped when he lost his name. 

(resignation was dull brass looped around his throat, and felt like eyes-on-him when he touched it. He didn't touch it much)

-

Clayton had been damn near shocked silent when he sees the Reverend.

The other looked normal, slim chains (marriage duty grief in a heart and alarming silver bright _law bearer_ crumpled links around aloysius’s heart) but the Reverend-

Manacles, had been his first bewildered thought, someone had slapped the priest in irons. Heavy, thick and iron dark around his neck and wrists, nearly hiding his white collar and Clayton tried to look past them. 

He couldn’t. 

Every time the man shifted it was accompanied by the clink of metal. There’s a slim string of rusty steel leading off to what Clayton thinks is the church’s direction, but the heavy links on his wrists vanish into his own arms, and the one around his neck drops straight down and _ends_ like it’s simply behind something, it’s nothing like the shattered ends of grief he sees even in members of this odd posse- 

He tries not to think much of it, focuses on the task at hand and the goddamn weird snakes motherfuckers crawling out of the ground-

“Anchor me,” he tells the Reverend, and his bare wrists brush against a dangling chain and he nearly loses his fucking grip because that felt like electric shock and biting into ice and the unfathomable smallness of standing before the grand thunderstorms on the plains-

He breathes, and he shoves the feeling in the little box where he keeps terror and pain and his gossamer chain of hope-for-future, and he continues. 

(later, after a dream and the dead rising, he sees the priest throw lighting and the chains light up blue like the metal is molten, like the screaming crack of lightning and he thinks _oh_ )

\-----------------------------


	8. patrol

\--

The Reverend takes to patrolling the graveyard late at night. 

It's a bit foolish, he's never been much of a morning person and the late nights aren't helping his awareness for his morning sermons to the three people and tumbleweed that show up.

But he wanders the rows and rows of an ever growing cemetery, gravestones like like a stunted forest in the dark. It's quiet peaceful, just himself and the dead and whatever attention God can spare for a preacher late at night.

He finds himself singing softly, once, as the lantern swung gently in his hand, sending shadows dancing over carved names and dates. It’s mostly prayers, to start. Hymns the reverberate deep in his chest and roll from his tongue in nearly a whisper. 

Matthew chases off graverobbers a few times, thankfully a rare crime of late. 

He mostly just paces through the rows like a farmer checking an orchard for blight, looking for freshly disturbed earth where there shouldn’t be. 

He finds it once, something awful and rotted halfway out from a grave, nothing but empty hunger in its face so he shoots it. He only looks at the name once the last of the dirt has been brushed off gloved hands. 

It’s a very old name, dead years before he’d even heard of Deadwood. He murmurs a prayer and wishes him a goodnight.

Matthew walks into the cemetery one night, fog drifting around his legs. The light from his lantern is nearly solid from it, warm golden glow like honey, bright against the silver moonlight. He walks, shotgun against one shoulder and lantern in hand, singing softly. 

He finds something halfway out of a grave, coughing and gasping, and the face looks up in bewildered recognition.

Matthew walks out of the cemetery with an arm thrown over one shoulder and a body stumbling against him, warm in the lantern light.

The Reverend has taken to patrolling the graveyard late at night. 

\-------------


	9. lantern light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> might expand on this later

\--

It's built as a joke.

Or the original idea was, anyway, why would you need some fancy detector when you've your own two eyes and then someone mumbled about fog and the dark and suddenly it was less of a joke. 

-

They end up being simple little things, several bits of mirror and colored glass wrapped in silver and copper wire soldered into something that looks like a tiny version of a mad alchemist's lantern.

But they work.

-

Miriam gets ahold of one first, well two, actually, one to actually use and one for Arabella to pull apart. The one for use sits in her bag for a while, until Arabella insists on dragging a long suffering Clayton to the church for some tests, citing the large, mostly clear room would be ideal to see how sensitive the device was. 

They don't think to tell Matthew they were there, why would they? The church was usually locked but Arabella had a key, and it was late in the evening to better see the device's light. 

-

Arabella holds it close at first, the flare of the bright blue light when she turns it on catching the both of them by surprise. The light catches in Clayton's eyes strangely, like a wolf in the dark.

Arabella notes this, as upon asking her eyes don't do the same. She backs away steadily, Clayton slouching against the wall near the podium. 

The light dims as she moves away, and she's absently noting that it seems to only be useful for fairly short distances when the light flares.

Her head snaps up and Clayton hasn't moved and is staring wide eyed at the device in her hand and grabbing for a pistol and the door swings open behind her.

-

"Oh it's just you," says the Reverend, blinking in the abrupt brightness. He squints at the device Arabella's brandishing like a weapon.

"What is that?"

His eyes glint in the light. 

She hears Clayton make a tiny, punched out noise behind her as she says "undead detector." 

He frowns slightly "It's not very subtle is it? It's very bright, how do you know when-"

She backs away, slowly, and the light dims. The Reverend watches and unwilling realization slowly blooms across his face.

His hand drifts up to press over his heart. 

"I see," he says, "please excuse me." 

And he turns and walks back up the stairs.

"Clayton," Arabella says, and he's already past her, footsteps sure on familiar stairs. She catches a glimpse of his face, concern and confusion clear.

She sets the lantern down.

\--


	10. things to know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again this might end up either in something else or longer but eh

\--

Here are the things people know about the Reverend in Deadwood.

He's an earnest, nearly shy man.

(The women at the Bella Union meet him when Miriam drags him in mid errand to say hello to Jodie. They discover that while he's fairly unphased by their job, and he does seem to regard it as a job, he is incredibly easy to fluster via genuine compliments. 

All of them notice how he makes himself small in the way big men who have learned how easy it is to break things and have no wish to do so. All of them notice how he keeps his eyes on their faces with no effort, apart from the occasional wary glance at skirts like he knows where the guns are kept. 

Miriam comes back to a few of the women chirping about how sweet the Reverend is, Miss Miriam, you really must bring him back sometime and a blushing Matthew.

((he tells them that if they ever want to come to the church they will be welcomed, that if they ever want to speak just let him know and it's not the sickly pity they'd all encountered before just a simple offer. some think about it))

He rarely speaks of hell, and does not condemn all and sundry to its bowels unlike the previous priest. 

(One brave soul asked why he hadn't, still fearful and disbelieving after a confession of loving another man had netted an 'and' and some concerned discussions about guilt and shame and the Reverend just says hell is for malice, hell is for cruelty, hell is not something to threaten with and says he and his young man are always welcome and tells the now blushing young man that he's actually done a few weddings before-)

He may have been in the cavalry.

(No one knows which one, no one wants to ask. He was seen wielding a shotgun during the thing with the risen dead, and at least one poor soul has ended up face to face with a nasty looking pistol he keeps at the small of his back.

But this is Deadwood, so no one asks)

He's a little uncanny.

(It is not, actually, the rumors that the man threw fire with his hands that occasionally makes people nervous around him. Instead it's the way he sometimes knows a little too much about everyone, the way his eyes look before he draws his gun, how his shadow dont always quite match how he's standing. How it feels like there's somethin’ else listening when you speak to him sometimes. 

How no one will play cards from him, other than those who don't know better and the Coffin cause you walk away convinced you were playing for more than pennies but nothing ever happens except for that one time it did but that guy needed shootin’ anyway.

How there's sparks and ash around his fingers but no cigarette.)

There's a lot of little things the people know about the Reverend in Deadwood.

There’s a lot of things they don’t know too.

\---


	11. poker chips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just an idea

\--

They still don’t know what’s been killing people.

Not Aly with his contacts, not Miriam talking to people, not Arabella and her ever growing hoard of books. Matthew certainly has no idea, and has been considering increasingly stupid options to solve this because his people are dying and-

Matthew is sitting in a corner table in the Gem Saloon, vestments traded for vest and shirt in a way that’s become a signal for people to let him be unless there’s an emergency. The folks who recognize him, anyway, it’s quite stunning the difference his white collar makes when it comes to reactions to the breadth of his shoulders and the scar on his face.

It’s not an especially busy afternoon, summer heat turning everyone sluggish and sleepy apart from the ever present wariness. Six corpses stripped to near bone might be mistaken for animal attacks if they weren’t showing up in people’s homes. 

He’s fiddling with the poker chip he’s never shown the others. It looks normal if you don’t look too close, clay rattling quietly against the table as he rolls it back and forth. There’s a faintly etched skull where the worth marker should be. 

It had just showed up in his pocket one day, the curves of the skull all too familiar from his mind’s eye.

He catches the coin again, clay warm against his bare fingers. There’s a faint tug like iron filings against a magnet. Matthew blinks down at the coin and sighs.

The world blinks away.

It looks like the Gem Saloon, still. He’d never actually visited the entity the others called the Bartender but he’d rather thought he’d appear by an actual bar instead of what he’s pretty sure is his same seat-

Clayton Sharpe drops into the chair across from him. 

Matthew stares.

“What the fuck.”

Clayton actually smiles at him, quicksilver and nearly boyish, bright in the dim saloon. 

“Didn’t know priests were supposed to cuss, Reverend.”

Matthew can feel himself gaping like a landed fish.

“How, how are you-” Because it’s him, Matthew couldn’t explain why he was so sure it was Clayton and not some facsimile come to torment him but it’s him.

“Did you think He was lying about giving up our souls, Reverend?” He says with a wry twist to his mouth, pale eyes strangely bright-

Clayton isn’t wearing a hat. That, of all things, is what brakes Matthew out of his paralysis. 

“No, no I did not, but, Clayton-”

“You had a question.” Clayton is watching him, utterly still. He isn’t breathing, Matthew realizes, hasn’t yet except to speak.

“I- yes. I don’t suppose you know what’s been killing folks recently? Leaves some….unpleasant corpses.”

Clayton hums, and Matthew nearly comes out of his skin when a shot glass appears next to his hand. 

“Have Miss Arabella look up revenants, might point you toward what you’re looking for.” 

Clayton tips his head to the shot glass by Matthew’s hand. Matthew picks it up and pauses, glass halfway to his lips.

“We will be speaking again, Clayton Sharpe, I will not abandon you,” he states, and downs the glass before Clayton can respond.

The whiskey burns like fire and he catches a glimpse of Clayton’s startled face-

Matthew is sitting in a quiet corner of the Gem Saloon, poker chip cool in his hand.

\-----


	12. greedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which deals with the Dealer may have side effects (cw body horror)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to expand this at some point but it's been sitting in my drafts for months so

\------

“Greed ain’t cheap” the Dealer says like a dare.

(matthew knows that)

He cuts himself while shaving (ha) and bleeds black tar that stills smells copper iron like blood. It is tacky and warm on his fingertips, and he blinks and blinks and it stays tar like what had welled up like a wound from under the church. He blinks again and it is red but the wrong red, nearly glowing in the dawn light and carefully he touches his tongue to it.

Copper and iron. 

(he will have a bewildered moment downstairs where the scent of blood hangs heavy in the air and then he breathes and it’s just the faint acrid scent of oil)

Matthew wakes up because his bones ache, from skull to toes and when he sits up the world spins and feels strangely fragile like if he reached out and p r e s s e d

The floor is rough against the bottom of his bare feet and he bites down on his tongue with teeth that are the wrong shape. 

(it isn’t too obvious in the mirror, he doesn’t think, canines and incisors just a bit too large and he has to practice his sermon over and over before he stops nipping his own tongue) 

He should be screaming, he knows every time. He should be terrified, should be angry and praying and begging but-

He opened up his bones and offered the marrow and something else was set back inside instead and he thinks about its sometimes, how if someone took him apart right now he’d bleed pitch and if his bones cracked open gold energy may come spilling and sparking out he’d laughed a bit when he’d seen the color when the Dealer had opened him up.

The bones in his fingertips elongate, just slightly, and his nails darken and harden and the skin begins to bloom inky wells around the bases of his nails and he’s never been so happy for the fashion of gloves. 

(greed ain’t-)

He can create shields and fling fire and nudge luck and help his friends 

(take me, he bets, bright eyed and smiling like a threat, take me i am greedy, take me i will be-)

The world he lives in is a half step from where the rest of him exists now, he thinks he feels another set of arms and reaching hands sprouting from his back sometimes, knows it when he’s able to pull Clayton up with a surety he shouldn’t have from how he’s positioned. 

(mine, he rumbles, staring the Dealer down over a newborn grave, mine)

His skull aches and he sees double, and has to remember to keep too many eyes closed, has to remember to keep his yawns from cracking his jaw into a maw, has to remember to-

Matthew is fucking lucky, is what he is, that this half step of a veil keeps most from seeing eyes and teeth and arms and the weight of what he thinks may eventually be horns

(greed is-)

It’s all fine because Deadwood and the people in it are _his_ , his to look after, the four people he loves most in the world are _his_ to look after to scrape off the slowly dissolving vestiges of humanity for as his mouth tastes of tar and ozone and copper-

-because he’s a greedy son of a bitch.

\------


	13. of thine constellations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matthew met an angel

\--

“I. Apologize,” says the angel.

The man (just a boy really) stares up at it, trembling where he kneels in the dirt. Gleaming points of light embedded in the shafts of feathers the size of tree trunks creak and rustle around him, creating a false sky in the moonless night. A form so bright it eats the light around it looms before him, somehow both standing near his own height and so high above him the horizon arcs. A great wheel of eyes, all whirling, rotates slowly around where the not-figure’s head should be.

(he’d felt so brave, running to glory in the dark.)

“I need. Not to be seen.”

The words he doesn’t hear so much as they arrive in his mind fully formed in his own voice. Quiet, and without ceremony.

He stares up at it.

The night is cold, and he can see his breath hang in the air. The great dome of feathers and eyes creak and whir in the silence. He always pictured far more noise, in the stories. Trumpets and grand pronouncements like upended mountains. This being is so very quiet, for all its grandness, and its eyes are still flickering wildly (some rich human brown others slit pupiled green others square black bars in gold others still milky white and scarred-).

“I need. Not to be seen.”

The many wings flex. He realizes, with an inexorable sort of certainty, that the angel is frightened.

“Please.”

It seems to tilt, just slightly, toward him, and he understands.

He nods, voice frozen in his throat. 

The angel leans forward and the man (boy) experiences the awful sort of rushing one feels tilting over a cliff’s edge-

-

He wakes up curled under a tree.

(when he stands the edges of their shadow looks strangely feathered)

\--

The angel uses his own voice to speak to him. It's incredibly disconcerting at first, having what feels like conversations with himself. Eventually he either parses out which is which or the angel gains their own accent of sorts, something almost rough and drawling. It’s still hard to tell some days.

(he doesn’t really notice when his own voice deepens to match and it gets harder and harder to tell who’s speaking)

\--

The angel sends soft queries when he wakes from a nightmare, his blood washing cold and hot until the shaking sinks into terrible exhaustion. The angel still has trouble with words sometimes, and being rudely woken from whatever passes for rest by a bolt of panic is unpleasant no matter the being in question.

 _flash of startled wings, open maw below_. The angel asks. A heartbeat (still rapid). _bared teeth and fists?_ It offers next. 

He huffs a shaky laugh, and wraps the beads of his rosary around his knuckles like a boxer does his bandages. The muscles in his back tense and flex, just slightly, trying to resettle impossible wings.

“Just a nightmare, nothin’ but ghosts in my head.” His voice is a bare whisper, inaudible under the snores and occasional creak of the cots of the other men in the barracks. The winters are cold here, colder than he’s ever been before, and his breath plumes in the air, visible even in the dark. 

Something gentle and warm presses against the inside of his eyes. He closes them and presses his knuckles to his lips, feeling the beads against them as he murmurs, expression twitching into a faint half smile.

“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch or weep tonight and give Your angels charge over those who sleep…”

\--

The angel came to him when he was young and terrified, limbs still gangly and voice not fully broken. The angels stays.

The angel stays when he runs, the angel stays through blood in the dirt and the screaming of dying men and horses, the angel stays as blood soaks his soul.

The angel stays.

\--

What should our (my) name be? They think to himself, three days from loud noises and death in the night.

A memory, looking up (down) at a trembling slip of a boy (a battered many winged being). A gift of refuge (safety, promise).

_Matthew. Gift of-_

\--

Three facts about angels.

They are sentient the same way a well loved tool is sentient, anthropomorphized only by human thought.

They cannot be perceived by human senses the same way one does not feel the earth rotating.

They do not have wings or great halos or eyes.

(other things, however, do)

\--

“Give unto me your souls, and I shall-”

_NO._

The thing pauses and the angel is snarling _mine_ wings mantling over the lot of them, a sparrow challenging a mountain. 

_Surprise_. Washes over them. Then.

 _Amusement_.

“Very well. Will they help you dispel your hate, little echo? You’ve already taken one of them.”

-

They all wake up in the dirt, moon high overhead, nightmares still ringing in their ears.

“I apologize, I wasn’t expecting….that,” Reverend Matthew Mason says. He hasn’t looked up to meet their wild eyed stares. He’s sitting cross legged and with his elbows resting on his knees. 

“.... apologize for what?” Arabella says, wary. 

There’s a creaking, like tree trunks in a storm. 

Wings unfold, and a great halo of eyes blink open. 

“Oh."

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bits of a fic idea I had in like, November and never was able to finagle into a real fic. there was a vague idea that the "angel" was like, equivalent of a future 'level 20' matthew's soul come back in time instead of being like, an angel angel but could never make the rest of the fic work so dumping it here cause I liked the bits I had well enough XD


	14. look out for the lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unfinished murder mystery set vaguely after an AU of canon. Might continue this someday but I ran out of steam and it's been long enough I figured I might as well toss it in

\--

No one really talks to the lighthouse keepers. 

They're considered a weird bunch, don't talk to each other either. Just them and the lonely spires on the spits of land left when the western coast shattered into its water filled canyons, candles set out by the depths to warn approaching ships of earthen teeth.

Clayton likes the sound of that.

\--

There’s all kinds of ghost stories about lighthouses. 

Many were told to him when he first heard about the job opening, huddled in a corner of the local saloon and soaked to the bone with the endless drizzling rain. 

Ghost ships of a bygone era breaking themselves endlessly upon the sheer cliffs, echoes of former light keepers haunting those who took their place, the madness of being the only source of light in the yawning dark night, monsters rising from the depths, dead men staggering out of the water, so on and so forth. 

All conveyed to Clayton with the utmost of seriousness of the very drunk once he’d said he was lookin for work.

He hears all this and thinks of a lost duel and dirt under his nails and does his best not to laugh.

(maybe it would’ve been different had he been laid to rest proper, had deadwood found a preacher after it drove the last one out but there had only been a burnt down church and no one to tend to the dead but the doctor-)

He takes the job.

\--

His lighthouse is a squat little thing, whitewashed with the keeper-with _his_ house huddled up against it. 

It’s on a spit of land with a small rise and a driftwood laden bit of beach below. Clayton is just thankful he wouldn’t have to learn to sail on top of everything else. It’s a calm day, ocean a rich grey to match the overcast sky. 

He feels like the lock should’ve made a more final clunk thank the well oiled click it does make, and he resists the urge to cuss at himself for being a melodramatic fool. 

The last lighthouse keeper hadn’t even met a grisly fate, just run back east to marry some rich gal. 

“Ain’t gonna be a problem for you, huh?” the local showing him had laughed with a gesture at Clayton’s unkempt beard and the dark circles under his eyes.

Clayton had glared him into an awkward silence as he took the keys and paperwork. The name he’d scribbled wasn’t Clayton Sharpe of course, Lesley C. Mire was the new lighthouse keeper.

(c for clayton because he’s being stupid and sentimental and he’d started to make friends until-)

The house is in good shape, mostly furnished, and the lighthouse itself actually has instructions, thank fuck. 

That night he sits against the railing, light whirling steadily behind him as he stares out into the dark. He can hear the waves crashing far below, the smell of salt heavy in the air. 

He’d fled to Deadwood to hide, in hopes he'd be left in peace amidst the myriad of killers. Just one wanted poster among many. It hadn’t worked, and Aloysius’s empty expression as he raised his gun still haunts him miles and months later. 

Clayton lets his head thunk back against the metal frame below the window. 

It’s mighty peaceful here, just the light and the waves.

Maybe he’ll get to keep it this time. 

\--

It takes a few weeks, just over a month for Clayton to mostly figure out a routine. He’d never realized there was so damn much to do to keep one of these things running. Cleaning and checking on the intricate mechanical bits and goddamn painting seemed to be the most of it, he’d not painted this much since he was a child and roped into chores. 

It’d been a long damn time since Clayton had tried work that didn’t require a gun in hand, if only for simple fear of being caught without one. Clayton Sharpe had been his best armor for a long time, wearing danger like a shield, like a preemptive strike in all dark suits and well used revolvers. 

Now he’s just wrapped in sturdy pants and simple shirts with the occasional sweater shoved over his head, too long hair tied and shoved up under a watch cap and perpetual stubble from being too tired to shave some days but too lazy to keep a proper beard. 

He looks quite the ruffian, someone neither Arabella or Miriam would’ve spok-Clayton shakes himself from his reverie, rag still pressed against the rippled glass of the Fresnel lens. 

Half his goddamn time here is just learnin the names of everything. Luckily before everything went to shit the folks who ran all the lighthouses had things pretty figured out and he has an honest to God instruction manual and everything. A whole lotta lighthouses had been built in a hurry after the Maze fucked the coastline all to hell, which meant a lot of people who had fuck all idea of what a lighthouse _did_ were suddenly running one.

Not that Clayton has a problem with this, it lets him have this little spot of peace, far away from most eyes. 

Most.

(he played solitaire once, bored out of his skull one late morning, cards laid out in patterns over and over. he’d been looking at a massive hunk of driftwood and thinking of how it might make a lovely bonfire and he’d been shuffling cards and started to draw-

and dropped the entire deck to the floor, waxed paper scattering all over as he shook _imaginary_ sparks from his fingertips)

The cloth is worn soft under his hands and the lantern glass has finally reached a stage of proper cleanliness after several weeks of abandonment.

Clayton's found that cleaning settles him in his skin in a way few things have before. Like looking after his pistols had, but tracking cleanliness behind him instead of blood. 

Clayton finds himself laughing quietly to himself at the thought that he regards vanquishing dust balls more impressive than vanquishing _death_.

He's a little annoyed that the clouds of dust and the like still cause him to sneeze when he ain't exactly sure he still needs to breathe. 

Figures.

\--

Clayton makes the three quarter hour long walk into the town of Driftwood Bay once every week or so for supplies. 

It'd be a quicker trip on a horse but there’s no space to keep one, and between that and the sheer goddamn volume of shit the lighthouse needs to keep runnin and he's of no mind to add that responsibility to his list.

It's a very pretty walk if nothin' else, a winding path with plenty of big goddamn trees and weird rock formations fallin down into the water below. His lighthouse was less of a true spit of land and more just the end of a series of interconnected sorta islands with deep, rock filled channels in between the not connected bits.

There's probably actual words to describe this shit but he ain't been much of a reader, not like-

Well he might as well poke around the general store while he was there, there was fuck all else to do.

Maybe they'd have shit on Mesopota-Mes...Mespotania? Weird shit.

He's not expecting much but the fella who worked the counter had been reading some sorta fancy lookin book last week, he'd have some sort of idea most likely.

It's a nice day for a walk at least, sunny for once but not hot. Clayton follows the flash of silvery fish in the water and happens to glance up at one of the islands neighboring the road and stops.

How in the _fuck_ had he missed the church?

\--

Clayton Sharpe had had his curiosity burned out of him years ago, withered by habit prompted by fists or gold. 

Lesley Mire, however, had not.

He's on no particular schedule and it's early enough that he finds himself wandering over to the bridge connecting the tiny island the church sits on to the road. The edges of the island have the shattered, raw look that much of the coastline around here does, and the build looks old enough to have been there before the island was.

Clayton knows there's another church in the town proper, and looking at this he finds himself thinking about where the rest of the town might've been once, and that the whitewashed planks making up the little bridges compensating for narrower sections of the path ain't just a quaint affectation. 

There's still a fair few big damn trees on the island that had mostly obscured the church from view, which is how he must not've seen it before. 

Branches creak in the wind as he rounds the corner and freezes.

The church was burnt.

Or it had been at one time, new wood and the scent of new paint noticeable over the salt breeze mingled with the bits of not yet replaced charred wood.

Damn near half the thing had burned down, a gaping wound facing the empty bay.

Huh.

Someone was taking care of it, on account of the new paint and all but after a few minutes of poking around he didn’t see anyone. He ends up standing at the clearing by the water and staring out into the bay for a few moments just enjoying the sun and breeze before he turns and starts heading into town again.

(it’s such a little, silly thing, his new appreciation for the sun and the strong sea breeze. it’s so far from what his end was he thinks he must be dreaming some days)

\--

"So you’re our new lighthouse keeper?" 

Clayton twitches violently, spinning away from where he’d been contemplating which spices to try and dump on the meat he was gonna get from the butcher's. 

"Oh I didn't mean to startle you, dear," the tiny old lady who'd somehow snuck up behind him quieter than any goddamn owl on the wing says, apparently oblivious to the fact that he'd nearly acquainted her with his bowie knife.

“I wasn-not at all, ma’am,” Clayton replies in pure polite reflex, long dead manners resurrecting themself in the face of a diminutive grandmother and her raised eyebrow. 

"Ethel Rosenbaum," she says, "Pleased to make your acquaintance…"

"Lesley Mire," Clayton replies, reaching up to tip his hat and hitting the brim of his soft watchcap instead. 

She smiles at the gesture, deep laugh lines around her eyes making it apparent this is a common expression of hers. She barely comes to the top of his chest, with sun weathered skin and iron grey hair bound up in braids that increased her height a bare few inches.

"So you _are_ our new lighthouse keeper then. I believe you'll do better than that young Jeremy Poole, imagine running after some young lady you've never met just because she put an ad for marriage in the paper. All the way back to Massachusetts even! None of my daughters would be foolish enough to post such a thing either, who knows what nonsense might get dragged in! You may even end up with a husband who can't cook, which is an outright travesty. On the subject- can you pass me some of that pepper, dear?"

Clayton hands her the pepper, still reeling from the bombardment. She pats his arm in thanks and he manages to conceal a flinch.

"Let me know when you're in town next, my dear Eloise is making a roast and always makes entirely too much."

"I wouldn't want to trouble-" Clayton’s atrophied charm makes a feeble attempt to resurrect itself before promptly being bowled back over.

"Not at all dear! Now keep yourself warm up there in that there lighthouse, and say hello to the Reverend on behalf of Eloise for me," She continues, and somehow Clayton finds himself standing outside the general store, blinking, and holding some garlic, salt and pepper he has no memory of buying, watching a tiny whirlwind make her way down the street.

"Just met Mizz Ethel huh," says one of the old men who seem to come pre-equipped to the chairs outside a general store.

"Apparently," Clayton says blankly.

\--

The ocean is really goddamn dark at night. 

It’s the sorta thing that should be obvious before you’re unfortunate enough to say it out loud, there’s fuck all around other than the distant flicker of other lighthouses and the stars. Of course it’s dark. 

Hell, Clayton _knows_ dark-

(hands scrabbling against wood the taste of dirt and rot thick in his mouth-)

he’s slept out in the mountains and the plains with nothin’ but a campfire and a horse for company and it was dark as hell then. Like the world shrunk down to this little fire, especially when clouds ate up the stars. 

But this, he thinks, chin settled on arms crossed on the lower railing where he sits on the gallery deck, this is an entirely different kinda dark.

Light flares behind him, the beam slashing into the blackness like lightning made honey slow, splashing on the ripples and waves.

And then it’s gone again and Clayton is staring into the dark. It’s deeper, he thinks, not cause of the sky or nothin, but the water itself. Like a great pool of ink, glittering along the surface just enough to remind you of the unseen depth of _space_ beneath. 

Moonless nights out in the plains was mighty unnerving, no doubt to that, but at least the world stopped at the earth beneath his feet instead of just keeping on going. 

Light flares again, catching on rippling black-

That isn’t a wave. 

Clayton startles into a crouch, eyes locked on the not-wave movement. He’s spent a lot of damn time lookin at water recently, learned how it moves. And what it looks like when something big like a whale or dolphin or some shit is moving through it. 

This wasn’t it.

Light flares.

When he was a kid he’d seen a rattler sliding along loose sand, little ripples in the grains eminatin’ from the winding motion. This looked like that but without the snake.

Unless-

The water parts, and light flares, and Clayton sees a tattered rise of fins along a long, long body-

And then it’s gone, and Clayton is perched in a crouch on the galley decking, lantern spinning steadily behind him.

“What in the _fucking hell_ was that,” he breathes.

-

He doesn’t see the whatever it was again

\--

Ice cracking and creaking around him like a settling mountain and smothering him, liming his limbs in chill death again again again layers and layers no one will find him just a slab of frozen meat silently screaming-

Clayton jolts awake with a not silent at all scream.

\--

He finds the corpse because of the gulls.

It wouldn’t’ve been noticeable otherwise, the tangle of dark cloth obscuring bloated skin among the driftwood piles. Just another dark shape among many.

It's an older man Clayton doesn’t recognize under where the birds got to him. What little is left of the face don’t look even slightly familiar at all, even at a closer look. The gulls scream irritably from above where he shooed them off as he crouches on the driftwood and rocks that make up the beach.

The stench is fuckin awful. The usual corpse stink mixed with the smell of salt and dead fish and seaweed trapped by the piles of driftwood is not a pretty perfume. Thank fuck the wind is whiskin some of it away. 

Clayton stares at the body for a minute and finds himself absently wondering if it were a drowning or something else.

"No, you don't fuckin need this shit, Sharpe, lookit how the last fuckin mystery you stuck your damn fool nose in ended," he hisses to himself. The corpse, thank fuck, does not make to reply. 

The gulls continue to wheel and shriek overhead. 

Clayton eyes the corpse a moment.

" _Fuck._ "

Hunting for an appropriate stick takes no time at all, and he gently pushes the thing over, resulting in an awful wet thump against the neighboring piece of driftwood and a new waft of rot stench as the slime coating the stones below makes acquaintance with the air.

Gagging Clayton recoils from it, nearly dropping the stick. 

When he looks back he swears again, because the goddamn entire back of the skull is now visible. Or it would've been if it weren't entirely caved in.

So much for a drowning.

\--

There's a not inconsiderate amount of time where Clayton gives serious thought to just shoving the damn thing back into the water to be someone else's problem, but with his luck it'd just wash right back up again. 

Clayton sighs, deep and aggrieved before he turns to head back up the bluff to head into town. 

\--

Lesley Mire has no reason to fear the noose, or even cell bars so Clayton Sharpe is tucked away, leaving a quiet, gentle man behind. 

One who is suitably alarmed when the deputy groans "Another one?" upon hearing the corpse’s description.

"Nothing to worry about, usually just out of towners falling off all the damn cliffs around here," Sheriff Cooke says, "The currents like to deposit them near the lighthouse. I'm sorry to say you're likely to see more during your posting here." 

It's said with a wry twist to his mouth, grim amusement glinting at the newcomer in the sheriff's eyes under heavy brows and nearly cropped salt and pepper hair.

"Um," says Lesley Mire, who's unused to such gorey talk.

"Might as well show me now before the birds get to the poor bastard any more than they have," Cooke says, chair screeching across battered floorboards as he stands and grabs his coat and hat.

“If you might be so obliged to accompany me over to Crawford’s, the undertaker’s,” he adds to Lesley’s quirked eyebrow, “and we can take the cart back and you can show me exactly where you found the man.”

"Sure thing, Sheriff," Lesley Mire says. There’s no feeling discomfort at the thought of accompanying a lawman and a gravedigger back to his home, not like Clayton Sharpe would have.

(aloysious fogg at the other end of the street aim fire aim fire aim for the hand get hit in the heart darkness wood dirt-)

None at all.

\--

\--

“Ah, Mister Mire! Good to see you this lovely morning,” Reverend Mason smiles at him, expression bright and open and made brighter by the morning light streaming through the windows, catching dark eyes and turning them honey warm. 

Clayton feels heat creeping up his neck as he resists the urge to fidget with the package he’s holding. He sees Mason glance at it and Clayton clears his throat.

“I was just in town and grabbed sommat for ya,” he tosses the bundle at Mason, who catches it after a brief fumble. “Just thought with all the repairs n suchlike and it getting colder you might want sommat to keep that priestly cloth of yours clean.”

Mason opens the bundle while Clayton’s still making a rambling fool out of himself, revealing the sturdy leather jacket within. He examines it as Clayton finally shuts his mouth, and Clayton is definitely not watching him nervously. 

“Thank you,” Mason says softly, and he glances up, looking almost shy, “Lesley.”

“Clayton,” Clayton blurts and nearly takes it back when Mason stares in surprise, “I uh, Lesley Clayton Mire’s my full name, I’d prefer Clayton.”

Mason blinks at him and then smiles, skin around his eyes creasing and Clayton’s eyes catch on the sun lit glint of silver at his temples-

“I would be obliged if you call me Matthew, then,” Mas-Matthew says, and shrugs the coat on

“How’s it look?”

“Good,” Clayton squeaks and clears his throat, “Looks fine. I uh, I had best be heading back. Have a good day, Reverend Matthew.”

“You as well, Clayton.”

The sun is bright and warm on his face despite the chill air, and that’s certainly all the reason for the warmth on his cheeks as he finishes the trek back to his lighthouse.

\--

\--

Clayton wishes for a brief visceral moment that Aly was here, that _someone_ better at thinking and talking to folks and figuring shit out was here instead of some dumb fuck of an undead gunslinger. 

The poor bastards set floating in the bay deserved better. 

In the next beat he’s selfishly glad none of them are, he doesn’t think he could stand to see any of their reactions-

(arabella maybe vicious curiosity maybe blame maybe jealousy _why not my_ \- miriam maybe pleased until she touches him and realizes what he- aloysius empty empty empty-)  
None of them are here, just Clayton. So he’ll have to make due.

\-----------------------


End file.
